


bang bang, hurry up

by Metronomeblue



Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: AR is a secret matchmaker, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe- Soulmates, BAMF Carolyn, Babette is a queen, F/F, F/M, I really love this though, M/M, Margaret is a badass who doesn't need anybody but her kids, Multi, Soulmate AU, [comes three months late with starbucks] should be on my grave stone, but still fluffy, happy valentine's day, lots and lots of romance, much less fluffy than it sounds, oh and prose all over, oh my god this took so long, sort of, very very proud of this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 11:43:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1185838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metronomeblue/pseuds/Metronomeblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you're meant to be with somebody, you'll know. You'll feel the burn, feel their name tear itself into your skin, vicious and bleeding and permanent. (Nobody ever said love was gentle.)</p><p>Soulmate AU//Lanskiano-centric, slice of life-type thing</p><p>In a world when a single touch can bind you to a person for life, there are different ways of coping. Meyer chooses the stubborn one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bang bang, hurry up

**Author's Note:**

> [comes three months late with starbucks and soulmate au]
> 
> -The title is from one of my favorite songs, "Waltz" by the Naked and Famous. Excellent band from New Zealand, I highly recommend!
> 
> -There is literally almost no timeline to this beyond the Meyer/Charlie bits, the Mickey/Eli/June bits and the Dean/Viola bits being in chronological order. Seriously, pay no attention to the timeline- there isn't one.
> 
> -I am so incredibly sorry about how late this is.

 

Sometimes Meyer thinks it's his fault. It's not, really; it's a fact of nature, fact of life. He and Anna weren't ever going to work out, and they both knew it. If you're meant to be with somebody, you'll know. You'll feel the burn, feel their name tear itself into your skin, vicious and bleeding and permanent. _(Nobody ever said love was gentle.)_

And with Anna, it wasn't that. Her name settled on the surface of his skin, pale and quiet, as though he was already beginning to forget her. I'm Meyer, he said quietly. Anna, she breathed, joy radiating from her face. He thinks maybe that's why he did it. He just wanted to feel that kind of joy, feel it in a way he could handle. Meyer couldn't always handle the good things, he'd had so many of the bad, but he wanted to know what that was like, that careless sunshine that glowed from the very depths of your being. But Meyer, _silly boy_ , he ripped the sunshine from her soul and took it apart. To see how it worked, he jammed the machinery and dissected her still-beating heart with an intrigued dissonance.

There she lies, still and quiet as she always is ( _always has been_ ) and breathing with a sigh in every exhale. Meyer glances at her name on his hand, and it's so faint it could be an age-old scar from the wounds he can't remember getting as a child.

"Anna," he sighs, and she rouses herself in hope. There is a glimmer of the sunshine still in her eyes, and a part of Meyer- deeply buried and locked far beneath his self-control- wants to take that from her, too. And perhaps he's going to, if not quite in the way he'd like. "I think we should stop this."

"I agree," she says, and the tension that's been building in him ever since he met her falls loose from his shoulders, Atlas dropping his weary burden.

"Good." And the sunshine in her eyes fades along with the lines on his hand. ( _Fades like sunlight giving way to the night._ )

On the Chicago skyline, there's a particular building to look for. It's tall, (sort of), and it reaches up to the sky as though this one building is enough to split the clouds and crack the heavens, spill angels and righteous men over the city of sin and soulless blood.

It's not a church.

You could say it is, but it isn't, really. It was once, but now it's a tenement. An apartment building full to the brim with impoverished, desperate hearts and bloody, broken souls. It's also home to three brothers and their mother, all of whom share the last name Capone. The eldest is quiet, watchful and responsible, lacking of the careless, arrogant charisma and humorous, breezy charm of his respective younger brothers. He misspells his name in school, but finds it easier at home, where his mother is proud he can even speak English and his brothers look on in awe as he writes his name over and over again. R-A-L-P-H, he writes, because he can't spell Raffaele. He draws it in the dust, the dirt, carves it into a bar of soap Al keeps stealing. He marks his name anywhere he can because otherwise, he fears, he'll be forgotten entirely. Lost in the wake of his more dynamic, intoxicating brothers. ( _You can't forget someone when they're carved into your skin. Not when their name is everywhere you look._ )

Al is going to be a thief, Ralph decides one day, fishing his things out from under Al's bed. Anybody who steals so compulsively could be nothing else. Al is clever, in his own way. He can find your weakest point and hit it with his strongest punch; tear you to shreds with blunt scissors.

Frank is a heartbreaker, even at seven. A quick flash of smile and a bashful look is enough for shopkeepers to give them any leftovers they have. Frank's clever, too, sly and underhanded and small. He'll be tall, dark and handsome, Ralph thinks, charming people out of their money and marriages and businesses.

_(Ralph doesn't know what he'll be, besides Ralph.)_

Somewhere far away, _(but not too far, not really)_ , Dean takes a drag from his cigarette. There'd been a girl in, one Wilma Harris, and she'd had Dean's name Marked wide and dark across her face. It was unsettling, uncomfortable, and he almost didn't recognize her beneath the thick scars.

"Wilma," she'd said, unamused by his lack of recognition. "We met last Saturday?" And his understanding grows at the same rate as the manic hunger in her eyes. They'd slept together, her desperate and wanting, him frustrated and looking for something he knows now he'll never find in her. His name on her face is just the clincher. There are certain individuals, unstable and occasionally deluded people who have an unfortunate tendency of finding themselves Marked by people who don't feel the same way they do, who can't love them the way they should be- need to be. They develop an obsession with their intended, a one-sided fixation that usually ends with one or both of the involved dead.

"Look doll, it's just not in the cards," and the words are harsh but he says them not unkindly, maybe even sympathetically. "Go home, get some rest." She wants to protest, but he motions to Crutchfield to catch her, "They'll be gone in the morning." Or at least, so he hopes. Dean doesn't want to be tied to a fanatic who can't look away from him, but he doesn't want her to be tied to him, either. It's an unkind fate, an unjust punishment for so small a sin as one night.

Hymie crooks an eyebrow at him, and Dean just shakes his head. The names streaked like ink smudges along his back and arms don't belong to girlfriends or childhood sweethearts. The only girls' names with a place of honor in his very soul are those of his mother and sister, and Hymie knows this better than perhaps anyone else.

"Rough," Hymie comments. Dean can tell he wants to say more, but he doesn't, and for that he's grateful.

"That's life," he grins, and the hollowness in his chest is pushed down a little. His companion hums suspiciously and steals a cigarette from Dean's pocket, sticking it between his lips to roll up his sleeves. Dean sighs out smoke and observes. His Mark is silver-pink on Hymie's arm, a scar that will never fade or change. Immovable.

"Back to work in ten, though?" Hymie wheedles, tilting his head and fixing a strange look at him.

"Yeah," he nods. "Sure." He stubs out his cigarette anyway, and stands.

_(He waits.)_

Richard Harrow is jerked awake in the night by another soldier.

"It's time," he whispers, and Richard nods. There is methodic movement, men packing what little they have. All is darkness, and silence hangs in the air like heavy spiderwebs, twining around them and holding them fast. There is a prickling at the back of his neck, a creeping sense that something is wrong spreading like ice water over his back. He turns away from his pack, the silence seeming off-kilter now. The other men are still shifting and moving, but Richard feels the wrongness in the air, the shift in the silence. And then, there's a loud click.

His world explodes in bright light, fire creeping over his body to flow into his eye, burning and breaking and ripping away at his flesh. He burns, and writhes and screams until there is nothing left of his face but the bones. He is blind and burning and in so much pain and-

"Richard," Jimmy is shaking him awake. "Richard, you okay?" Richard sits up.

"Mmm, fine." He takes the offered glass of water gratefully. "Thank you."

Jimmy nods and goes back to the other side of the room. The candle by the door glints off of Richard's name curled around his forearm, and it helps him go back to sleep, knowing he's not alone, that a man he calls a brother is nearby.

He thinks it might have been Meyer's fault, in the end.

It was fate with Meyer, fucking destiny, and if that's not trite he doesn't know what is. But it fits, y'know? Slides into place like a bullet in a gun, and Charlie knows this is gonna kill him. Because when he meets Meyer, it's like all the breath is knocked out of him and there's a blinding pain across his entire body. He blinks and it's not gone, but it's manageable, and Meyer is looking at him like he's the strangest thing the kid's ever seen.

Later he strips off his shirt, looks at himself in the mirror and traces the _'M'_ scarred over his shoulder, follows the _'e'_ over his chest and the ' _y', 'e', 'r'_ down his side. It's a burning red wound that Charlie can tell will never fade completely, no matter what happens. He wonders if Meyer is doing the same and wondering who the hell Salvatore is, and winces   
at the embarrassment of telling the kid he doesn't go by his real name.

The girl he brings home the next night runs her fingers over the Mark and asks if it's his brother's. Charlie nods and kisses sloppily down her neck. She doesn't ask anything else, but Charlie lets his mind wander later. He lies awake and wonders what this means, who Meyer is going to be to him. He finishes his cigarette, and after a moment of consideration, stubs it out on his wrist, just to distract himself from the throbbing word spread out on his skin. 'Meyer', Charlie whispers as the smoke rises from his burning skin, and can only be grateful it's not last names that show up. Brother doesn't feel right for Meyer, though, and he never asks the girl back. _(Pain though, pain fits with Meyer in his mind.)_

Mickey Doyle wasn't smiling when the Mark burned itself into his back. In fact, he was fucking terrified. But nonetheless, he felt a familiar heat, a stab of pain and he knew he was fucked from here on out. There he was, lying on his back in a broken table, thrown off a goddamn balcony, and a Mark was carving its way into his skin. He turned his back to the mirror, passed a hand over knotted, red skin at the small of his back. 'Elias', written in blood and bone and misplaced love he'd forgotten he had in him. He paused over the red backbone of the 'l' and prodded it with a   
fingertip, the sharp shock and residual ache bringing the situation crashing down over him.

"Shit," he says after a moment of silence, still staring at the indelible proof healing into his skin. And then, unexpectedly, he began to giggle, small fits of laughter that bubbled up from his lungs and burst on the roof of his mouth. As time passed, the laughs turned to sobs, and he fell to his knees, smiling and crying and shaking.

_(Scared out of his wits.)_

Babette doesn't have any Marks. There isn't a single name curling on her skin, not one letter inked into her heart. Every man who's ever seen her naked, every woman who's ever shared her bed, all of them are repulsed by it, frightened by someone with a whole heart. Babette's never had her heart broken, never shared it, never split off a piece of her soul and laid it down in someone else. Maybe she's never had a heart at all, but she doesn't care. Unlike the rest of the world, she moves on with her life. She stops bringing people home with her, stops pretending to love.

She does, however, take a long, long look at Gyp Rosetti. Too much for him, she says, and she knows she is, but there's something off about his manic grin, and it bothers her. It keeps bothering her until she tears her eyes away from him and looks at the company he's keeping, at the men at other tables. Each of them have Marks, names, family and friends pressed into their arms and fingers and faces and necks, but Gyp, ( _like her, like her_ ), has nothing.

His skin is empty.

_(She doesn't touch him again, afraid that the peaceful emptiness she's grown to accept will be ruined, afraid that maybe she's been waiting all this time instead of being.)_

Meyer Lansky does not know any 'Salvatore', and it's making him angry. There's this long, musical name wrapping like a tether around the curve of his wrist, a deep, bloody red, soft tissue and seared skin and more intimate than it rightfully should be. It scares him. Meyer Lansky does not do intimate, doesn't get close if he can help it, (and he usually can). He breathes angrily through his nose, looking at himself in the mirror. There are dark half-moons beneath his eyes and an unhappy set to his mouth that speaks of sleepless nights and too many numbers to worry over and   
dissect. He tightens his cuff around the Mark burned into him and straightens his tie. There's nothing he can do to get rid of it now, so he'll just have to face the new day with whatever dignity he can muster. ( _Which, with his being Meyer **fucking** Lansky, is a lot_.)

Dean brings another girl home. He kisses her, long and hard, until her lips are bruised and her eyes are watering. She pushes him against the wall when he stops, and starts kissing down his throat, leaving impermanent marks, small purple flowers that will fade in a few days. He reflects, somehow still thinking, that they're inferior replacements for a name burning itself into his skin. He arches his back against the bed, lets her take charge, thinks of how the pain of her fingers pressing into the marks she left is dull and slight compared to the scarring he was hoping she'd bring with her. He leans up to kiss her again, all grasping fingers and teeth at her lips. He leaves for work in the early morning. (He leaves her in bed alone.)

Gillian is lonely. She's always been lonely, empty, broken. She remembers the long years of childhood, bereft of family or friends, all the other children, the Children's Home workers, disgusted by her pale, perfect complexion. Not a scar, not a word, not a Mark to be seen. The only person unbothered by it was James, sweet boy, and she never saw him again. And then, when she was thirteen, she met a man far older than her. He worked for the town, some position of authority. She doesn't care to remember, only knows for certain that after that 'Louis' was burned into her stomach, black and thick and wide, like the letters weren't meant to be there.

She gave birth nine months later, as women do, and the moment she held her son she could feel it. An unbearable, beautiful pain, wrapping around her throat like a vise, a chain, a necklace. She looked in the mirror later, traced the name repeating endlessly in a circle around her neck, smiled.

Her son is gone now, though, and Gillian is alone again. She loses track, looks for her son when she knows ( _knowsknowsknows_ ) that he's gone. She writes names on her skin, draws in thick, red, letters and hopes they'll stick. She smudges the ink into her wrists until it looks like blood rising to the surface of a Mark, until she's not pale and alone and angry. She doesn't remember half the people the names belong to, but she writes them over and over and over again anyway. _(RichardEnochEliCharlieLouisJamesTommyAngelaJuliaJames)_

Sometimes, though, she remembers everything, remembers everyone, and stands in front of her mirror, tears running down her face as she traces the name around her neck like a noose and smiles.

_(JamesJamesJamesJamesJamesJamesJamesJames)_

Mickey doesn't really like New Jersey. Never has, never will. Too much coastline, too little farmland. He'd grown up in rural New York, polished an all-around American accent planting carrots and picking apples. Seeing a skyline without trees is just wrong, and the whole thing unsettles him. He takes a deep breath, deeply aware of the name at his   
back, and clambers out of the car, all unfolding long limbs and thick clothes that disguise his stick-bug frame.

"Hello," he begins, expecting Mr. Thompson. Instead, he finds himself face-to-face with a blonde, shy woman. He's confused at first, until it clicks in his head. Eli wears a wedding ring, and so does she. He's been staring, and she smiles warily.

"June Thompson," she offers a small hand. "I suppose you work with my husband?"

"Mickey Doyle," he grins and bows awkwardly, and she offers a small chuckle and a sweet smile. "At your service." He takes her hand to shake, and there's an immediate pain on his throat, the junction of neck and jawbone. No, he thinks, no please. But she gasps too, her hand going to a spot behind her ear as if she's been burned. And, Mickey   
supposes, she has.

He leaves her his message, and she nods. As he leaves, she's still absentmindedly rubbing her fingers against the name arching across the back of her neck. Mickey settles his hat back on his head and strokes a finger of his own across his pulse point, feels the curving script of her handwriting claiming a piece of his heart. He smiles nervously at her, and she, sweet, anxious, married, smiles back. ( _It shivers down his spine, how easily she could become a part of him._ )

Helen climbed out of her window that night. She descended the rose trellis, knocked on her sister's window and kicked off her sensible half-inch heels. To hell with that, she thought, hiding behind the age-old oak to change. Shrugging off her nightgown and pulling a red, red dress over her skin, Helen contemplated the meaning of life. Easing her dancing shoes over silk stockings, she came to the conclusion that it must be something important. Pinning up her hair with the pond as a mirror, she decided she just didn't care.

"Helen! Hel!" Vivian hissed, easing the screen door closed behind her. "Where are you?" Helen waved from the pond's edge, sliding a comb into her newly-tamed curls.

"How do I look?" she asked, smiling. Vivian examined her for a moment, eyes sliding from her dark hair to her own Mark looping over Helen's shoulder like the sleeve of her nightgown, down to her sister's red shoes.

"Like a king's whore," Vivian said shortly. Her sister laughed and patted her shoulder as she passed.

"Excellent," Helen called airily over her shoulder. "As long as royalty's in there somewhere."

( _Vivian follows, ever the lady's maid to her sister's queen, but she does it willingly and with no small amount of fondness._ )

Anna loved Meyer. She didn't, anymore, but it had been a fact of life for several years now, and she felt odd without it crowding her thoughts away. She still has to shake herself sometimes, remember that the ceiling she’s staring at is her own, that these walls cannot fence her in. She still has to remind herself that Meyer wasn’t going to be hers, that her heart went dark for nothing, that there is nothing in him she should want.

It’s still _hard_.

The party's roaring, as it should be. There are men and women, young and old, lining the edges of the room, and Vivian yells out for a boy and goes to him, leaving her blood-dressed, irrepressibly regal sister to shake hands and kiss cheeks and hope for a burning pain that refuses to come. The only names on her skin are Vivian's, Edward's and Mary's, and those all happened around the day she was born. Helen wants to share her soul, wants to be so bound to somebody that they can pull her back to earth when she flies out of orbit, wants to know someone as well as she knows herself. Helen wants love, in a way she's never had it. She turns back to smile at Vivian, to reassure her, and she bumps into a man. He's beautiful, all sandy-dark hair and blue-grey eyes and her smile turns shy as he reaches out a hand to steady her.

"Dean," the man smiles charmingly, "Dean O'Banion." And then there's a burning, ( _wide and ecstatic and so brilliant she feels she's glowing_ ), at the corner where her shoulder slopes up into her neck, and the way the man is grimacing, he's feeling it, too. There's a pause as they each catch their breath.

"Helen Kaniff," she smiles back, "but you can call me Viola." And so he does.

_(For the rest of his life.)_

"Who's Salvatore?" Kate asks, and Meyer looks down to his rolled-up sleeves and flushes. The name is bright red, edges fading out into his skin. He puts down his papers, unfolds his sleeves. He pulls them down, buttons them, locks himself up. Charlie hasn't seen Meyer's skin before now, hasn't noticed how empty it is, how few Marks are winding around him, and it strikes Charlie, suddenly, how distant Meyer keeps himself. There is no camaraderie, no friendship. He is a silent, lonely pillar of silver and grey.

"Nobody," he says.

Charlie wants to explain the name to Meyer. He doesn't have to, Meyer already knows, but Charlie can see denial rising behind his eyes even as the word leaves his mouth. And he gets it, really, he does. Where Charlie is names over every plane of skin, carefree smiles and scraped knuckles, Meyer is covered from neck to ankle, silver suits and numbers, numbers, every minute of every day. There is no way they could work together peacefully.

But Charlie's never been that big a fan of peace

"Hey- Can I talk to you? For a minute?" Meyer's eyebrows raise half an inch and it's stupid how intimidating he is. But the kid follows him down the hall to the bathroom. He stands awkwardly for a moment as Charlie paces up and down the three-foot space. "I'm Salvatore," he says, as though he just wants the words out of his mouth.

"You?" and Meyer's not grey and silver now. He's angry, and Charlie's fingers tap against his thumb a mile a minute. "You're Salvatore?" Charlie nods. "Not Charlie?" Meyer prompts with the air of someone who hasn't lost control of a situation but feels they're very quickly headed in that direction. Charlie watches as he reaches up to run restless fingers through his hair, but pulls away at the last minute. He's seen Meyer's arms, bare of Marks except his own, and he thinks he understands why he doesn't want even that.

"I like Charlie better," he admits. Meyer stares angrily at him for a moment, a flicker of terror in his eyes. Their locked gazes reveal pieces of themselves neither wants to give up, and so Meyer gets furious and Charlie ignores it.

"This doesn't change anything," he says finally, voice taut and void of all emotion. He straightens his cuffs, clears his throat. "We work together. That's it." He turns, goes to leave, and Charlie has to make him understand. He catches Meyer's wrist, and he turns back to Charlie, mouth open to ask and eyebrows pulled down.

"I don't want to be that person," he says hurriedly, and then, trying to make him understand, he adds, "I want to work with you." Charlie thinks he's gained ground, brown eyes looking back into his, as afraid as he is. But Meyer's jaw sets, and he pulls away.

"That's _it_."

Ralph is five years older than Al, four years older than Frank, and he's beginning to feel it. That bowstring quiver in his bones, that ache in his muscles that foretells the coming of seasons' change. His fingers quiver when he buttons up his shirt, and the only Marks he's ever had are his brothers' and they hurt all the time. He doesn't know what it means, but he's fairly sure it's not good. He feels them all the time.

Every now and then they get darker, the red turning purple or blue, like a bruise. They flicker like electricity whenever something touches them, and he hisses.

_(It feels like a rip in his soul, and it worries him.)_

Mickey isn't used to caring about people. He's never really bothered before, and it's strange that after all this time he should gain a pair of handcuffs. The Thompsons, he reflects, picking a bottle of scotch off the table, are exactly like a pair of handcuffs. They bind him here, root him down. He doesn't want love, he wants an escape route, and now more than ever he needs one.

"Fucking hell," he sighs, tossing back a glass of pure scotch that should have been made into not-so-pure product. There are seven Marks on his body, he knows. Marta, Thomas, Matthias, Gretchen, Henry, Elias, June. Two of them he's never met, or if he has he never went back. He know because he's counted, tracing over them in the night, his brothers' names, ( _Thomas, Matthias_ ), his mother's, ( _Marta, Marta_ ), and now these two.

There isn't a good reason for their being there. No excuse, no explanation that could possibly make it alright.

Meant to be.

"Gimme a fucking break," Mickey mutters, abandoning his glass and going straight for the bottle.

He bumps into her outside the scene of a crime, and she smiles at him. Many people flinch away, step back, run. But she doesn't, and it's charming. She smiles at him sadly and shakes his hand and tells him not to take any wooden nickels. He feels a tingle and a shiver and her name creeps over his ribcage like it's scared. He can feel the connection solid in her bones and the trepidation in her trembling fingers, and he wants to make her okay. What Richard wants is irrelevant, though, because she pulls away with a sheepish smile and turns.

( _What Richard wants is to make her happy, because that's what Richard always wants before things go pear-shaped._ )

Dean comes into the shop whistling. Hymie's trimming tulips, gloves secured around his wrists, and he looks up from his work.

"You alright?" Dean stops dead, turns to look at him, and grins madly.

"Never better, Hymie, my boy!" He dances over, slings an arm around his friend's neck and begins humming again.

"What the hell happened to you?" Hymie asks, shrugging him off.

"Met a girl!" Dean smirks.

"You meet lots of girls," Hymie scoffs, keenly aware of Dean's Mark tingling on his arm. It's not jealousy, exactly. Hymie doesn't begrudge Dean this, doesn't want him unhappy, but he does want him safe, and Dean's lost too much of his heart already. Hymie's seen Geary's name bleeding and aching on Dean's ankle, tripping him up every time he thinks he's safe.

"Not like this one," Dean says, and the tenderness in his expression makes Hymie smile.

"Yeah?" Even through the gloves, the tulips made his fingers itch. "What's she like?"

"Independent, clever, beautiful, kind," Dean smiles gently, twirling a rose. "Hymie," and he pauses, looking up stare nervously at his friend. "She's perfect." There is hesitation on Dean's lips, something more he wants to say, something important, but he's not ready and Hymie is nothing if not understanding. He's known Dean since they were children, knows every expression and story and heartache, and God knows, Dean's listened to him moan about his girlfriends enough to fill a gossip column for years.

"And way out of your league, from what I hear," he jokes, nudging his friend fondly. Dean scowls, and Hymie laughs. "I'm sure she feels the same about you."

"When did you become my therapist, anyway?" Dean scoffs, tossing the rose at his head. "We got work to do."

And like that, the day begins as always. Dean gets ready to begin trimming roses, and Hymie pulls off his gloves and tosses him his apron. They trade grins, and Hymie's glad to see confidence, arrogance there because it means Dean's himself.

The gunfire is still echoing when Charlie and Meyer crouch down behind a pile of crates. Meyer's shucked both jacket and vest, tie loosened and slightly singed. His lip split at some point, and Charlie's fingers itch to wipe the blood away. Meyer licks it away with the tip of his tongue, and Charlie should never be this attracted to someone in the middle of a fight.

"If I ever stand up again I'm going to split his fucking brain in half and turn it into glue, that fuck-faced, ass-headed..." Charlie's never heard Meyer curse until now, but Jesus, the man would make Charlie's dad go red with shame. Just then the man's gun jams, and Meyer creeps along the barrier with a flash of triumphant smile. He springs up, gun primed expertly for a man who hardly ever uses it.

"Fucking son of a whore if you don't put the goddamn gun down I will ram it so far up your ass you won't be able to crawl for weeks!" Charlie wishes AR was here to see his perfectly composed protege spitting foul insults into the faces of his enemies and scowling like somebody had set his cat on fire. (And Meyer was a cat person, Charlie couldn't even imagine him with a dog.) "Down! Now! There are thirty-seven men in that warehouse with bigger, stronger guns than mine and the inclination towards using them," Meyer hisses, barrel of his gun flat against the stubborn man's temple. Charlie wants to pull him forward by his tie and- well. Charlie doesn't want to go down that train of thought. Meyer's made it indescribably clear what he thinks of Charlie.

"So hows about you put the gun down, fucker?" Charlie sneers from his other side, his own pistol cleanly set across from Meyer's. Charlie's smirk grows wider when Meyer makes a face at him.

_(The man drops his gun.)_

June doesn't have to explain it to Eli. She knows he sees it the minute he comes home. He looks at her, concerned and she shakes her head. (Later, she says, without saying.) They wait until all the children are in bed, and she pulls her collar open, unbuttons it one-by-one. Mieczyslaw, it says, burned a peony-red along her hairline, arching long and gentle around the back of her mind. Eli just shakes his head with a resigned, sad smile and unbuttons his shirt. There, on his right shoulder is a streak. Mieczyslaw, it reads, a red like drying blood. They sit beside each other that night, contemplating what this means for them, their marriage, their lives.

June isn't worried. Slightly perturbed, and confused as to how she'll explain to others, but she's happy. June Thompson does not shy away from love, no matter how it comes to her. Goodness knows, there was little enough before her meeting her husband. She loves Eli, has since the day the met, long before they actually found themselves Marked with   
each others' names. Mickey Doyle makes her feel much the same, sliding into her heart like a lonely shadow and hoping she'll be kind enough to ignore him.

_(June isn't as kind as they believe.)_

Eli's terrified. He doesn't need this, doesn't need anyone else creeping into his life, has absolutely no desire for anyone else to sneak into his heart while he's not looking. He's worried enough about the children, June, hell, even Nucky. He's never had to care about Mickey Doyle, never had to hope for anything other than the man's impending doom.   
But there's a Mark sprawled across his shoulder, and he doesn't want to admit that hatred and annoyance turned to fondness somewhere along the line.

_(He's lost pieces of his heart to Mickey, and that makes him vulnerable.)_

Gillian is invulnerable. It's the first thing Richard notices about her, stamped as it is over her skin.

Jimmy had had her Mark, twisted around his ankle like a chain, binding him to her wherever he went, whatever he did, and Richard isn't likely to forget that any time soon. Jimmy had Angela's name thin and artist-spidery over his collar bone, Richard's Mark twisted up his arm like a promise. Jimmy had 'Enoch' scrawled over his stomach, right where it   
would hurt most to be hit, had Marks all up and down like most people did.

Gillian had Jimmy, and nobody else. And that made her invincible.

But they shake hands, she and Richard, and there's a tremble up his spine, like a shadow of a touch. Richard's never felt what normal people feel, never had the bright flare of burn after a handshake, and for the great majority of his life he's never wanted to. He knows what it means now, knows what he felt when he shook Julia's hand, when he dipped   
her in the dance hall, when Angela handed him his portrait. Some Marks are instant, striking like lightning or a tsunami and with so little warning you're knocked backward in the force of it. But Richard's seem to come slowly, like a snowstorm or the pages of a book, building on themselves with time and growing love and loyalty.

And that's why he keeps doing what she says. Maybe he wants her to see it, too. Maybe he wants her to stop hiding from the pain, the burn that wants to flare up every time they touch. Maybe he feels that same loyalty to Jimmy, to protect his mother and son no matter how he wants to go. Or maybe the pale flicker of a Mark running down his back   
isn't enough. Maybe he wants more.

Maybe he wants a little burn.

Meyer doesn't want to be Marked. He is, and he wouldn't take back the three names twirling gently, _(like steel and red ink)_ , around him, but he doesn't want anyone else to see the people he loves, doesn't want his heart on display for everyone to see. He especially doesn't want Salvatore fucking Luciano's name curled over his wrist. He hates that, wants to wash it away, wants to hide that curious voice in his mind that asks him if it's worth the chance, because it isn't. He knows it isn't; knows in his mother's grave and father's dead eyes, in his blank, empty chest and emptier apartment.

He goes to work in the rain, raises his hand for the solo job, _(tries to ignore Charlie's eyes on him the whole time_ ). AR throws him an illegible look that Meyer doesn't even try to read and sends him down to the morgue for a body to bury.  _(Or burn, or dissolve or lock up. AR's not awfully predictable.)_ It's still raining when he goes, and he tries _(in vain_ ) not to think of how Charlie's hair looked slicked down by rain instead of wax.

Water pools up in his shoes around the fourth block, and with no cabs to be seen he resigns himself to being humiliated as well as drenched. His coat soaks through on block seven and by block eleven he feels like a drowned rat. _(By block twelve, he looks it.)_ The mat inside is soaked through, and he feels a vague guilt that he's about to make life that much harder for whoever has to wipe these floors. He rings the bell at the desk. It's brass, dulled with the touch of the grieving. He waits for a few moments, hanging his coat up in the faint hope it might have time to dry before he needs to leave again.

"Hello?" The coroner is a rickety old man. There are bloody-red and _(strange, unnatural)_ silver Marks covering every inch of him, painting him a ghoulish red and glittering grey, with flickers of skin. _(Thinner than glass and paler than ice)_  Meyer nods and steps closer to draw his attention.

"Meyer Lanksy, sir. Mr. Rothstein sent me to meet you." The man breathes louder than a hurricane and it gives Meyer a strange sense of having done this before. "Something about a dead body?"

"Yes, yes," the man waves, electric blue eyes peering curiously at Meyer. "Such an impatient young man, that Rothstein." He represses the urge to laugh. Everybody must seem young to this relic of a man. The coroner leads Meyer down three flights of stairs, into a bleach-white room that stinks of ammonia and formaldehyde. He walks like a cat, padding along tiled hallways as though sound doesn't exist beneath his feet. It's unnerving, and when they reach the body he tells Meyer to stay put as he flits in and out, doing ominous things with sharp utensils and thread.

The silence in the morgue is eerie, and Meyer, for perhaps the first time in his life, feels pressed to make small talk.

"So," he shifts uncomfortably in his rain-darkened clothes, "how long have you been working here?" The coroner chuckles.

"Son, I been here longer 'n you been alive." Meyer bristles, forever the ambitious younger brother. "Round about... Oh, must be sixty years, now." He snips black thread Meyer hadn't even noticed him take out. "Got started as a young pup, bit younger 'n you, I'd say, told it was good work. It was, at first. Couple years in people started starin' at me funny." Here he sighs, and Meyer's curiosity is strangely piqued. "Well, you get Marked up enough 'n people stop looking at you the same."

"What's that supposed to mean?" He asks, as though compelled to do so. The spindly, muscle-red man looks at him, unblinking eyes watering in the cold air.

"You make a connection with the dead, son. You learn their stories, trace their bones, steal their souls... It's gonna leave a mark. You kill someone, their name is on you forever. If you can't save 'em, can't help 'em, can't find who ended 'em, they Mark you instead." He runs shaking, withered hands over his thin arms. The glint of silver was still unnerving, only now Meyer knows why. "Don't become a killer, son. They'll know." Meyer looks at the body on the table, and notices for the first time it is the man he and Charlie had killed. "Sometimes it takes awhile, but the silver'll   
find you."

He finds himself wondering if he'll find silver on his skin one day.

 _(Wondering if Charlie would have the same name in his blood._ )

Richard doesn't like to take his mask off. Most people believe it's an injury, that it was the grenade that did it, that the tinges of silver-pink around the edges of it are scars. Jimmy knew better. Jimmy had his own silver, had long names with rounded vowels and silent endings stitched to his scalp with moonlight thread and a bloody needle. Sometimes, in the sun, Richard thought he could read them. Angela knew, too, after she drew his portrait. She saw the mass of red and silver his face had become over the course of the war, saw the Erics and Henris and Francoises and Liams and Matthews, all tangled up and stretched tight over his cheek. Sixty-five, that he could remember. Probably more, now.

He doesn't like taking the mask off, but sometimes he can't bear it. Sometimes he needs to feel the air, give these glittering ghosts on his face some room to run. Some nights, when the sky is dark for the lack of a moon, when the stars hold their breath and the trees don't so much as whisper, sometimes then he goes outside, leaves his mask on a table. He caught Gillian peeking out her window one night, pale face ghastly in the low gold of a cigarette. There was a haunted look in her eyes, a glimmer of understanding.

_(The next time they touched, he felt a heat at his spine, and he smiled.)_

Dean and Viola got married in January. It was freezing, unusually so, but the couple seemed warm all the time, happy no matter when you looked at them. Viola wore white, a dress that was shorter than proper but long enough to sweep her legs. Hymie had seen Dean in the store last night, lovingly trimming roses and stripping the leaves away from vines. The bouquet looked even better clutched in her hands, arm hooked in his and hips brushing comfortably. Dean's smile was so wide it hurt, Viola's lighting up the room.

Hymie grit his teeth and smiled obsessively throughout the whole affair. If he smiled, it couldn't be hurting him, couldn't upset him. If he was smiling he couldn't be feeling the sheer joy radiating from Dean's Mark. That alone should have reassured, should have told him that the bond between was unbreakable.

_(He just didn't want to lose Dean.)_

So when Vi comes to see him the next day, he's more than a little bitter. She's in, well, violet, dark hair curled perfectly at the back of her neck and a determined expression on her face.

"You're not turning me away," is the first thing out of her mouth when he opens the door. He opens his mouth to respond angrily, but she's already pushing past him into his hallway.

"Hey! Viola, you can't just-" She shoots him a look, eyes narrowed and mouth pursed, and she looks so goddamn motherly he just can't really argue with her. _(Dean would make a wonderful father, he thinks.)_ "Vi-"

"He's not going anywhere, Earl," she says, and he's thrown. Not only because, well, she called him Earl and nobody does that anymore, but because she knows. She knows, and she's here to reassure him and it's not usually something people try to do. "I know you think that just because he married me he's going to go off, back to Maroa or Jersey or Kilgubbin or wherever, but he's not. He's home, here, with you, and that's not going to change because he's suddenly got a ring on his finger." She still has that angry, disapproving look on her face, but she holds up a finger and rummages in her handbag and pulls out a twisted piece of wire with a tiny, very limp daisy woven into it. "Dean told me to give this to you," she begins dryly, "and here I quote, 'tell him he can join in, married life isn't his thing anyway but hey, whatever.'" Her crisp voice holds amusement and fondness in tandem with unamused indifference. He smiles, and slips the ring onto the necklace that used to be someone else's.

"Til death do we part," he jokes, still half in shock, and she smiles.

_(He just might approve.)_

Arnold Rothstein does not often meddle in the lives of his employees. They are, quite frankly, often dull and unworthy, and he therefore has more important business to attend to. But this time their personal lives are disrupting his business, and it's inconvenient. He straightens his tie.

"Beth," he calls quietly, knowing she'll hear him anyway, "If you would please bring me the telephone."

She does, with a soft smile, and quietly takes his tea tray away. She's efficient, near-silent, and gentle, and Rothstein has never had a better secretary. (It's a shame about her past, but she does keep it firmly in the past and so he ignores it.)

He picks up the mouthpiece with no small amount of trepidation, and reminds himself this is for everyone's own good. As the operator connects him, he glances at Carolyn's name arched over his left ring finger and sighs.

_(For everyone's own good, it seemed, but hers.)_

Mickey, now fully undrunk, _(which June will still be trying to convince him isn't a word in five years,)_ is having deep regrets for the amount of alcohol he consumed the night before. His back aches, and he knows he's propped up in somebody else's bed because his is never this comfortable. He's not really awake enough yet to sort out his memories,   
but he has enough in order to know the Thompsons will be very upset with him.

"Now I see what they mean by 'delirium'," he giggles, before wincing because it hurts his head to laugh. June shakes her head and tosses a wet dishcloth at him. Eli laughs, a short snort that's half ridicule-half fondness.

"You sell the stuff. Perhaps stop drinking whiskey and you'll feel better," she snipes, still miffed over the fact that her carpet is now a pale red-orange where before it had been yellow. (Mickey was really really fucking unsure what he did last night, but he was fairly certain it included more formaldehyde than whiskey.)

"I have no idea why you don't just throw him out," Eli snorts. June narrows her eyes and he nods obligingly. "Right, yes, okay." He raises his hands in surrender, shoots Mickey a commiserating look, and appears to bugger off to whence he came.

"I'm about seventy perspiratent undrunk," he mumbles, resting his head against the headboard. June comes back over to shove the dishcloth into his hand and mutter into his hair that really, Mickey, sit up, you'll choke. He smiles at her, unfocused but intent on impressing upon her that while he appreciates it, he doesn't need her help, but instead what comes out is, "Thank you." Her eyes are wide and pleasantly surprised, and he drifts away to sleep.

_(Eli's still smiling in the doorway, but he's closer to them both now, and a single, gentle laugh echoes through the room.)_

Babette doesn't know much about Gillian Darmody. And yet, here she is in her club, long red hair tangling like angry thorns around her face and arms. She's barefoot, and mumbling, and there are bright red smears up and down her skin. Babette climbs down from her vantage point, gloved hands ready to escort her outside.

"Have you seen my son?" She asks Babette, begs. "Is Jimmy here?"

"No, Mrs. Darmody, I haven't, I'm sorry." She's not going to tell her he's dead. Leave that to somebody else. She grips Gillian's shoulders firmly and steers her out the front door. Gillian reaches up to grasp her bare wrist, the sliver of skin not enough to burn, but enough to singe.

Babette can feel that tremor in her nerves again, that shiver telling her this is a person you could connect with, could love. She gives Gillian a final push away when she keeps looking back.

( _She keeps the gloves on._ )

Meyer's taking his gloves off, and it's distracting. Charlie's having a long fucking day anyway, but then in comes Meyer with his stupid nimble fingers and using his stupid fucking mouth to pull his glove off. The kid doesn't seem to notice but Jesus fucking Christ it's distracting and Charlie wants to yell at him. Only Charlie doesn't. Not yell.

Charlie wants more, a lot more, and he knows that Meyer won't give it. He's not sure Meyer can. But then he comes in all distracting and wet and gloveless and Charlie wants. Charlie wants what he can't have because it never wants him, and it frustrates him. Charlie takes things, steals and destroys and grins back at his broken victims with glass teeth and burning eyes, but he can't take anything from Meyer because Meyer doesn't have anything. Which is sad in and of itself, really, that Meyer is so completely without that not even Charlie can find something to steal from him. Meyer looks over at him, though, and there's a flicker in his eyes. It's a dark light that Charlie knows all too well, and he smiles, wide and long and predatory, because it's something like curiosity.

Meyer smiles back because he knows what Charlie is thinking, and if there's one thing he's learned about Meyer in the past five months, it's that he likes to unsettle people. He's always the first to take his hat off, the last to draw a gun. Always the first to flatter, to lie, to laugh. He plays people like they're puppets, ( _with all the patience of a God_ ), and cuts their strings, ( _one-by-one_ ), when they're not looking. Charlie likes to be the audience, the spectator who shoots the lead actor if the play runs too long. But Meyer is everything Charlie isn't, has all the qualities Charlie can't.

( _If he could have him, he would._ )

Mickey doesn't get that drunk, but he still shows up on their doorstep at midnight. He knocks and knocks and knocks until Eli opens the door with tired eyes and a strange set to his mouth.

"Doyle? How the hell did- you know what, don't. Just go-" His tired tirade is cut off by Mickey's mouth smashing down on his because fuck it this was always coming. Eli makes a strangled noise, reaches up as though to pull him off, and then decides ( _probably_ ) the exact same thing Mickey decided an hour ago. "Mph," he says instead. "Mick." He breaks away for a moment, and they stare at each other. Eli looks conflicted, somewhat aghast, and very mussed. Mickey looks like he has no idea what the hell he's doing, but is enjoying it anyway. A throat clearing interrupts the moment, and they turn in sync to see June leaning against the wall.

"Rude," she sniffs. "to not invite a key participant, wouldn't you say?" Eli looks even more shocked, if that's even anatomically possible, but Mickey giggles. Eli's surprise morphs somewhat into a countenance of annoyed fondness.

June pulls Mickey in by his tie to kiss him herself. Eli smirks, content _(for the moment)_ to watch, to figure out exactly how he feels about this arrangement.

_(It feels right, the three of them together. It feels like love.)_

Margaret Schroeder did not love her husband. She loves her children, more than anything, but she did not love her husband. ( _Either of them._ ) He gave her hope, and means, and protection. ( _From everyone but himself._ ) But love was never a question. The trust in her has long gone out, and she can't afford to love now. Owen's companionship, his understanding had been good to her, his love, ( _or whatever it had been_ ), rain to her wilting flower.

But she didn't love him.

Her heart had grown cold over these last few years, and she had made it strong and sound so that nobody and nothing could get in. Every time a man thought to approach her, she made the way there hell. Every lawyer and tax collector and well-meaning jerk who thought he understood her was blown back with the force of a thousand silent denials they'd never heard aloud before. She thought with a grim smile and a cold sympathy she could survive anything, but then Emily looked at her sometimes like she was afraid, and every wall came down, every horrific feeling melted in the face of this tiny lovely thing cowering in her path.

"Shhh," she'd soothe her, "you don't ever have to be afraid of me. Everyone else, maybe, but never me."

( _Her heart may have grown hard, but never quite as cold as she thought_.)

There's a house fire on 3rd Street, and Charlie gets caught in it.

Charlie's mussed up again, and Meyer wants to fix him. He's covered in soot, ash in his disarrayed hair and he's fairly sure Charlie's got burns all up his left leg, but he refuses to let anyone see. Meyer pushes past, asking forgiveness, but he's a touchy guy, let Meyer look him over and if there's something wrong he'll say. The others disperse, off to put out the fire, and Meyer kneels down to get a closer look at Charlie's leg. He doesn't flinch away or do much of anything other than stare glazedly at Meyer through his eyelashes.

"I'll be gentle," Meyer teases,and Charlie's lack of response worries him. "Charlie?"

"'M fine," he mutters. Meyer picks at his pant leg, peels the tattered fabric away from his scorched calf.

"Damn," he hisses, seeing the cracked and burned flesh. "Over here!" He calls to a nurse. "Charlie, why on Earth would you- no, never mind," Meyer hisses, manhandling Charlie out of his jacket and plucking at his shirt to be sure none of it was welded to his skin. It's in this plucking he finds a long silver stroke on the back of Charlie's neck.

 _Kevin_ , it spells in liquid mercury.

He bends down again in front of Charlie, checking to be sure he's still alive. He is, breathing and still somewhat conscious, but Meyer still feels the prickle of worry. They're face-to-face and inches apart, and Meyer resists the urge to lean forward and press his lips angrily to Charlie's.

_(They work together, he repeats to himself. That's it.)_

Hymie tries to move on, he really does. He meets Libby, takes her out a few times, really tries. It's just that every time he thinks about kissing Libby his mind circles around to Dean and Viola, and he can't. It still feels like betrayal, no matter he knows Dean loves Viola with all of his soul, no matter he's starting to love Viola a little himself. It feels like dying. Viola's noticed, he knows. She wants to help him, but there's no way to really do that, so she can't.

So when she shows up on his doorstep with a long piece of paper and two pencils he's thoroughly surprised.

"We're going to make a list," she sighs. "And then we're going to do everything on it." Hymie gives her a disbelieving look as she pushes past him. ( _She likes to push into his life, and he might be bitter if she wasn't so goddamn nice about it.)_ They make a list, or half of one, and she goes home. There are maybe fifteen things on it, but they know each other better, recognize their differences and laugh over their similarities. She's smiling, wide and happy, and so is he.

_(She keeps the list, and he laughs.)_

Ralph knew something bad was coming. He just hadn't known what. One moment everything is fine and the next he's got a burning in the crook of his elbow, and getting a call that Frank's been killed by the police, and then crash bang clink his world is breaking like glass hit by a bullet. _(Frank was hit by many.)_ He rushes to the morgue nonononono flipping through his head over and over and over again. Because not Frank. Never Frank, not Al, neither of his brothers can be dead, it's just not supposed to happen.

But it has, and it is and Frank is lying pale and tall and handsome on a morgue slab. He looks so very dead that Ralph can hardly look, Al bent sobbing over his still-bloody chest.

"I'll make them pay," Al hisses, and Ralph's heart strums up in agreement. _"Every fucking thing that crawls."_

_(He knows what he is now, and he is vengeance.)_

"You called Carolyn?" The fear in Meyer's voice is parallel to the anger, running in twisted rivers down to the conclusion that somebody has fucked up. Badly. (Maybe it was Meyer.) Charlie looks from Meyer to AR and raises his eyebrows.

"Who's Carolyn?" They turn to him, each with a different expression, and he's even more confused. Meyer looks petrified. (AR looks like he's never heard the word 'unhappy' in his life.) They've each mentioned her name before, but Charlie's got no clue who the broad is.

"She's his wife," Meyer croaks, rubbing a hand over his eyes. "And she's terrifying." Charlie smirks, but when he notices the flex in Meyer's fingers, he begins to think maybe he's not exaggerating.

He's not, as it turns out. Carolyn Rothstein is every bit as intimidating as Meyer believes she is, no matter what she may look like at first. She's petite, slim and blonde and she looks so fragile you'd never believe how strong she is. She stalks in with a purpose, practically drags Meyer away kicking and screaming to the front door.

"We'll just be going for a walk!" She calls, throwing it open. "Don't wait up!" Charlie waves goodbye awkwardly.

"Will he be okay?" He asks AR, who laughs and pats his shoulder in a way Charlie would bristle at from anyone else.

"Oh, he'll be more than fine."

Mickey isn't sure how he got here, really. He remembers the denial, the drunkenness and the panic. He doesn't remember the sex. (Which he's quite miffed about, really, because how often does one get to have a threesome with Eli and June Thompson?) All he really knows is that he woke up in their bed, stark naked, with one hand curled in Eli's hair and the other interlocked with June's tiny, bird-boned fingers.

"Oh," he says, and smiles when Eli pulls him down for a kiss. June smirks and rolls over onto her face to bury her nose in his back.

_(He's never been happier.)_

Dean O'Banion dies in November, when the leaves wither and the flowers frost over with ice and despair. It's fitting, almost, that the choir boy-turned-florist dies on a Sunday in the season of dying flowers, and yet that makes it all the more horrible. Hymie and Viola are asleep on a couch, halfway through a game of poker begun to waste time waiting  for Dean to come home. _(Viola was winning by hairs, and Hymie was determined to beat her.)_ The darkness is quiet, comfortable, friendly.

There is a sudden, sharp pain in Viola's neck and Hymie's arm, and they awake screaming, clutching at Dean's Marks on them both. There is a terrifying, agonizing moment where they can swear they feel him dying, where the life drains from them and nothing but despair and pain pain pain are left. _(Dean's last words are murmured, through blood and hazy vision, "I love you," he says to the two ghosts before him, as far away those same two people are dying with him.)_

The funeral is a widespread affair, hundreds, thousands weeping over the name of a dead man they barely knew. Viola and Hymie are nigh-inseparable from then on. There are rumors, of course, but everyone who matters knows better. Hymie moves out of his small apartment on the edge of town, takes what used to be the spare room in Viola and Dean's place. Viola is quiet, and while before he might have welcomed it, it feels wrong now for her to be so still and silent. Dean was her life, Hymie realizes, in a way he would never have guessed. _(Destiny is not always convenient, and it is never kind.)_

"Vi," he says, and sets down two pencils and a long roll of paper. "I think we should make a list." She looks at him like he's crazy, and he marvels at how they've changed.

It's a long list, in the end. Made up of things they want to do before they die, things they've never done, things Dean wanted to do. She bites her lips and steps outside reluctantly, golden sun turning her dark hair pale. _(He holds her hand and loves her more each day.)_ And the list gets longer and longer, and they cross more and more off and the rumors get truer and truer every day.

Until one day they reach the one thing on the list that always brings tears to Viola's eyes.

_(Become Parents, it reads in tear-blurred pen, and Hymie has to blink more than usual)_

"So..." Carolyn begins, arm firmly linked with Meyer's. "Salvatore?" He twitches and she smiles. "I knew you were a stiff, stoic heartbreaker Meyer, but I had no idea you'd branched out into pure stupidity." Meyer turns a little to level a glare at her. She flashes him a smile.

"I am neither stupid or a heartbreaker," he replies stiffly _(she knows him well)_ and tries to yank his arm away, she follows him, wire-thin arm and steel-strong muscle holding them together. "I am cautious and perfectly fine on my own," he emphasizes. She shakes her head, and he sees why she and AR work together, sees the needle-sharp intellect and beautiful silvery cunning beneath all that milk-white skin and golden curls. She is the vicious, determined where she pretends to be meek and quiet.

And now all of that is focused upon him and the one problem he would rather never talk to her (or anybody about), and he's beginning to crack under her pressure.

"Are you?" She asks, flicking a stray curl from her eye, expression honest and genuine, and he opens his mouth to reply before he realizes he'd be lying.

"No," he whispers. "No, I'm not." She nods, and leads him to the edge of a bridge he hadn't even noticed they were on.

"Breathe," she reminded him. "Or you'll die and we'll never finish our conversation." He managed a laugh, and though it was brittle it was true.

"I'd almost rather have a heart attack, thanks," he mutters, and her laugh knocks him even more off-guard.

"This Salvatore, whoever he is, is good for you," she muses, pushing herself up to sit on the edge of the rail. "You'd never have laughed before." She looked up at the sky, then back at him. "Maybe he's given you a sense of humor."

"I always had a sense of humor," he protests, only half offended. "I just felt like it would be unprofessional for you to see it." She smiles sadly, spreading her fingers.

"You boys and your professionalism," she says bitterly. "Are you so afraid to trust you can't even be yourself around those who love you?" Meyer doesn't know a great deal about the state of AR's marriage, but even he can catch her meaning.

"He doesn't love me," he denies bluntly. "It's just a Mark, it could mean any number of things." At her raised eyebrow he shakes his head. "It could mean anything, Mrs. Rothstein. Not just love, or whatever you believe it is."

"Even I saw the way he looks at you," she said, tossing a coin into the water over her shoulder. "And that's love, dear boy. Real love." Carolyn looks at him for the first time since they reached the bridge, really looks at him. Her blue eyes seemed to turn his soul to clear glass, picking out the threads and tangled spots of love running through his heart, his mind, his soul. "You look at him the same way."

Meyer stops.

Did he? Did he even look at Charlie? Yes, he did, he'd been looking before she dragged him away, he remembers. When did that start? When had he gone from avoiding him to seeking him out? When had Charlie become the first person he looked for in a room, become the last person he looked at before he left? When had his name become Charlie rather than Luciano? When had Meyer begun to smile ta him, laugh with him? When had Meyer started loving him?

_(When had Meyer stopped trying not to?)_

He pushes away from the railing, head reeling with the realization that he isn't just in denial. He's in love. With Salvatore fucking Luciano, smiling bastard, clever idiot, loud and sprawling and angry and messy and so madly, inutterably beautiful.

"I have to go," he calls to her as he runs in the opposite direction of where they came from. "I'll explain later!"

_(She smiles as he crosses the bridge.)_

Frankie Yale goes home every night to an empty bed. It wasn't always so, but it is now, and he doesn't quite know how to fix that. He sighs, shucks his coat and tosses his hat onto a table. _(Not the bed, he remembers her laughing, it's bad luck_ ) He loosens his tie and flops down to stare up at the ugly, cracking ceiling. Her name burns on his leg.

"I miss you," he says to the empty room. "Where the fuck did you go?"

_(Far away, he thinks. She's far, far from me.)_

She's in New York, actually. Dyed her hair black, wears more white than red, works as a secretary for an upscale guy; independent. She's done with murder, really truly done, and she's so goddamn sick of people telling her what to be. She's a secretary now, and if she wanted to move up in the world there wouldn't be a thing could stop her. (So   
obviously she likes where she is now.)

She misses him. All the time, and it annoys her because that's a tie she can't break, bridge she can't burn. His name is like fire on her hip and she grits her teeth.

"Fuck you, Yale," she mutters, flashing a quick smile at Mr. Rothstein as she files his papers in her desk.

Viola decides to adopt a little girl, in the end. It wouldn't ever feel quite right, a child that was half of either of them. Not without Dean there. They name her Emmeline Katherine O'Banion, after Dean's mother and Viola's sister. They're happy, in their own way, Viola and Hymie and Em. They still miss him, but they've got each other and they've found that that's wonderful enough for them to live on.

They finish the list one day, in the far far future. They laugh, and then cry.

_(Live again, the last line reads. And they do)_

Meyer runs all the way through the city, and when he comes up to Charlie's door he bangs on it like all the hounds of hell are after him.

"Salvatore!" he shouts, slamming his hand on the wooden door. "Salvatore!" It takes a few minutes and a bloody hand, but Charlie does eventually answer.

"Meyer. What's going-" And then Charlie pauses because something's changed. "You called me-?"

"Yes," he breathes, looking up. Charlie looks so confused, so surprised that it breaks Meyer's heart a little. _(He'd forgotten he had a heart, and it's exhilirating and lethal to know.)_ Patient, devoted Charlie who put aside a great deal to wait, standing there with all his dreams fallen into his lap and he could hardly believe they'd come true. "Salvatore," he whispers, and Charlie smiles. "I've been foolish, and stupid, and scared." He's panting, out of breath, and not entirely from the running. "I'd like to try this again."

"Hello," Charlie smiles, holding out a hand. "Salvatore Luciano. Call me Charlie." Meyer took it.

"Meyer Lansky."

"I'd like to work with you," Charlie laughs.

"I'd like that," Meyer agrees, smile so wide he thinks it may split his face. There is a pause, and then he decides to tell him. "I love you," he says, and in every word is truth. Charlie twines his hands into Meyer's hair and does what he's wanted to do since that first gunfight. They kiss, and Charlie's kissed a lot of girls, but something about how roughly Meyer pulls him down makes him want to do a lot more than kiss.

"I love you," Charlie replies, smile joyful and brighter than any sunlight, and Meyer knows now, why love is worth that risk.

_(It can be vicious and angry and cold, but it's everything good in the world when they smile.)_

**Author's Note:**

> So, that's it! Happy valentine's Day! I hope you all enjoyed it. :)
> 
> I'm still unsure if this even makes sense, but whatever it's done.


End file.
